Merchan to sentence Trump on Jan 10th

Will be given unconditional discharge, which is to say he is a convicted felon but will pay no penalty

Many were hoping Merchan would do the right thing and simply override the jury verdict and dismiss the case. There is almost zero chance these charges will stand up under appeal, and Merchan has to know this. If he doesn't, then he is just as stupid as he is crooked.

We can rehash all day how Merchan allowed a prosecutor to argue to a jury that paying an attorney's bill for a completely legal service is legal fraud and constitutes 34 felonies, but what does it matter at this point. At the end of the day this was the worst of the lawfare, simply because Merchan allowed it to go forward "prior" to getting the ruling from the USSC on Presidential immunity. Unlike the two Federal Judges, Merchan decided that he already knew how the court would rule and he didn't need to wait for clarification from the high court.

This would have been fine, other than the fact that Bragg did use testimony from official Presidential employees about activities that did (by the order of the USSC) have immunity. The USSC ordered that the immunity was not just from being charged, but it also protected Presidents from having their official duties brought up in court even for things that were not official duties. Merchan obtusely stating that there was no merit in Trump's appeal because entering into an NDA was not official Presidential act was an open act of ignorance and basically a strawman ruling. Trump never argued that entering into an NDA was official duty of the Presidency. He argued that people were called to testify about things that were covered under immunity, therefore the jury was tainted. This would not have happened if Merchan had waited before starting the trial.

On the flip side, this will allow Trump to start his appeal process, which no doubt will work its way up to the USSC at some point if it isn't overturned by the New York courts. Because Merchan not only used the Federal campaign finance laws in his jury instructions but actually provided the jury with a definition of the Federal law that differed from what the Federal Elections Commission had already ruled. He allowed a New York jury to overrule how the FEC had already ruled on the campaign laws that the FEC has sole discretion to rule on. So maybe by entering the conviction and allowing the appeals process that Merchan is doing Trump a backhanded favor. I doubt that is the reasoning behind Merchan's decision, but it is the reality.